ivyandpeony

Based on my first sniffs & swipes of the Lupercalia scents, Parlement of Foules is leading the pack for me. The rose is gorgeous and pure, a cousin to the dewy rose in Rose Red, and my nose didn't detect any of the sharpness that previous reviewers picked up. I can't identify the resins, but they are very warm, soft and smooth. They are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, not green/herbaceous, not smoky like amber, nor sharp or soapy like frankincense can sometimes be. The rose dominates on me, but the resins are always there providing a lovely, golden base. I love the simplicity of this blend as well as the gorgeous combination of notes.

OMG! Don't waste your money on a neti pot, just pour yourself the beverage of choice and sign on the forum. Sinuses cleared for free!

Macha, I am hoping that Santa brings you a new digital camera! Or batteries or a memory card or whatever it is that's botching up your old one. 'Cause living so close to the Lab, you could be our label picture queen, you know! But seriously, I always do appreciate your "preview" reviews. You never let us down when you get to be the first kid on the block with a new smellie. And when it comes down to it, that's my first priority: how does it smell?

The detail in Ninevah's picture is incredible - Herr Drosselmeyer is so adorable I'm contemplating ordering it just for the label. (I know a leather and pipe smoke scent is 180 degrees from "me", but - gah! Look at him!) Wonder if the Rat King looks similar. I hope someone posts a picture soon. I was contemplating ordering some of the "revisiteds" that I didn't click with last year - my tastes have evolved, and I might like them more now. Having seen the 2005 labels on these, I'm like MUST! HAVE! PRETTY! BOTTLES!! EEEEEEEEE!

Note : These are not my bottles (I wish, though!) nor is this my picture, I stole it from my dear friend in the Lush forum so you too could enjoy the beauty that is BPAL obsession. But we must find a picture of the Rat King!!

The same thing happened to me with Alone and I'm so sad. I managed to swap for an imp before my bottle arrived and couldn't believe that it made me react. I have reacted to just a few oils and the reaction is the same, red marks or welts and a burning sensation. Bengal, Al Sharain, Alone, and once Jailbait (of all things!) have done this to me. Oh, and Inferno, but if it doesn't do that to your skin it's supposedly proof that you are spawn of the devil. I can wear Chimera with no problem, so I don't know if it's cinnamon, or maybe an issue of its concentration. A friend on another forum suggested it was cardamom - but I can wear Whippoorwill (an all time favorite) which lists cardamom as an ingredient, and Silk Road which smells like it has it to me. Again, it could be an issue of concentration if that's the component that I'm sensitive to. I made rollers of Bengal and Al Sharain diluted with jojoba oil and that seemed to make them gentle enough for me (both have lots of fragrance so I don't notice any decrease in that at all!) I decided just to put my bottle of Alone up for swaps and hang on to my imp though - I'm hoarding too much and had to make some cuts somewhere. I feel lucky that those are the only reactions I've had when I see how sensitive some of y'all are. Must be all the industrial chemicals we kids got exposed to in the last 60s and early 70s.

I have an "older" bottle of Sol (I bought it over the summer at one of the BPAL retailers, The Enchanted Castle). It has a standard black & white BPAL label w/ an indigo border. So the new label must be celebrating Sol's return!

Wichapi, no one from the lab has ever posted exactly how the queue order is determined. I have ordered during the first hour of an update and been one of the last to get a package, and ordered late and been one of the first to get my order. Regardless of how the original order queue starts forming on an update day, it's going to get shuffled immensely as they go along filling orders - for example, if they still need a batch of a certain oil blended, then orders with that oil are going to move down the queue and they'll pack orders that they have everything on hand for. Or if an ingredient for another blend is backordered, all the orders with THAT blend will also move down the queue. So after 14 months of BPAL-ling, I've come to the conclusion that the time of day you place your order on an update day isn't a good indicator of how early or late your package is going to arrive. I know that doesn't really answer your question - but it's the best I could do!

I'm bumping this since I know some of you in colder areas have been looking for it!

Since you have a fairly complex ordering situation, you'd probably do best to get the advice of customer service at the Lab, answers@blackphoenixalchemylab.com. That way you'll be getting instructions directly from them and there will be much less probability of confusion. But just from my point of view - I'd do it as 2 separate orders. There are instructions and FAQ on placing PayPal orders and CCNow orders in the BPAL FAQ subforum.

I have heard metal is a no-no. I think many metals can react with the oil and cause it to go "off." I think glass daubers are best, since it's the only thing that you can safely store the oils in for a long time. Since imp wands are plastic and obviously stay in the oil without causing problems, some plastics must be alright too. Personally, I'm wary of plastics though, due to some of my disastrous home cosmetics experiments over the years. Like the time that I wanted to mix two nail polishes, but one bottle was too full, so I poured a bit into a Solo plastic cup to throw it away. The polish literally dissolved the cup and made a huge mess in the bottom of my bathroom wastebasket! My husband cringes any time I start acting like a mad scientist in the bathroom...

I second Judas Kiss's Whitechapel rec - especially since your mom loves lilac. It's fresh and brisk but full of lilacs on me. Nocnitsa is my favorite forest scent, because to me it doesn't smell like evergreens, but the cold air in an evergreen forest... sigh. Ides of March is a wonderful, crisp herbal bouquet and only carries the risk of her falling in love with it, but not being able to find it again... but isn't it better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all? Another scent that I think of as completely green is House of Night. Many people jump to the conclusion that it's a heavy floral because they only skim the poem that inspired it, but when you read it carefully you realize that the bright, heady flowers have all died, and the green trees, herbs and a few pale funereal flowers are all left behind to mourn. It is a deep, dark green scent and just gorgeous.

I'm slow, but I just got it! Rabbits....

That's a really good point about allergies, especially when you think down the road to future reactions. Lots of us have had or will have an irritable, sensitive skin reaction to a product we like at one point - but in most cases it's still safe to use. You can dilute the spicy scents, wait a half hour after a shower to apply, always apply over lotion so there's a barrier, etc. But when you have a true allergic reaction you need to be more cautious. I don't think it means you are going to go into anaphlytic shock the next time you're exposed to that oil! But you can become more sensitive to an allergen over time (just as you can develop a tolerance for it). Bottom line: I'm still craving a bottle of Inferno, even though I could write messages on my body with it undiluted and watch them develop like a Polaroid but sadly, gotta stay away from the Jailbait from now on.

Sorry to hear that someone has joined me on the Jalibait bench! Odd thing - I can still wear Chimera with no problems at all. The reason I can state this with such veracity is that last week, I was feeling tired and sinus-y, took a long hot bath, slathered up with lotion and then slopped on lots of Chimera because I wanted something comforting and I needed something I could really smell... and my dog ended up smelling like a big Chimera sugar cookie for days because he snuggled up to me in bed that night. I didn't have an itch, a welt, a bump or even a hint of one. I didn't even think about the possibility of cinnamon in Jailbait (shows you what a solid sense of self preservation I have, huh? ) but it definitely does have a hint of something spicy now that you mention it. Eventually I will e-mail customer service and ask about it, but with Beth on the mend and everyone working so frantically right now, it didn't seem of dire urgency to me.

Oh man, I about died when I first saw that picture. You should have to click on a little square certifying you are 18+ and you don't have a heart condition before you are allowed to see it.

BPAL porn from the Lush NA forum (thank BPAL forumite Brumbjorn for this lovely money shot). Love in the Asylum is on the far right.

When you hear someone who speaks fluent Hebrew pronounce this, it's beautiful! I gift my acupuncturist with imps and bottles occasionally since she's become a BPAL fan. When I took her a lot of imps including this one, she got so excited about it and told me all about them (I knew a little just from Beth's description). Of course I couldn't tell you right now how it was pronounced... I love to hear her recite the names of the Sephiroth too.

After 10 months of wearing BPAL with no problems at all (other than the skin-sloughing effects of Inferno that everyone experiences at least once ), I had my first true allergic reaction last week... I could see the exact pattern of where I had rolled the roller bottle on my arms, painted in pink and filled in with cute little hives everywhere. And the culprit? Jailbait, of all things. It doesn't seem to have anything spicy or itch inducing in it to my nose... but of course, I would react to something with no notes listed. A quick wash-off with soap and water and a little OTC cortisone cream and there was no trace of the ugly scene within about 45 minutes. I figure I'll do a spot test in a month or so - not that I'm so enraptured with Jailbait that I can't face life without it, but I have developed hives a few times in adulthood when I have been under stress. (And this was the day that my brother, his wife and 3 kids were coming into town for a few days... having called the night before to move their arrival up a day. Jeff and I were cleaning, organizing and shopping like mad people so we'd be ready for them at 6 pm Thursday instead of noon on Friday. Ah, family love. ) I just don't want to prematurely panic that there's some mystery component I'm allergic to (or bother the Lab trying to figure out what it might be), if I was just especially sensitive at the time.

"I'LL TEACH YOU TO PUT THOSE LABELS ON UPSIDE DOWN!!" Depending on which labbie gets strung up, it might be considered fun. I'm picturing Peter Murphy stopping by after Coachella to help label some bottles.

I'm infertile also, due to PCOS and thyroid issues... and about to turn 40 at the end of August. Our next recommended step was to try a few rounds of drugs and artificial insemination with my husband's sperm. We decided not to proceed with that for a number of reasons and needless to say, we've had our share of disappointments over the years. So I can understand where Oro is coming from. But I wasn't offended in any way by Summer's post, and hardly think she deserved to be reamed out nor compared to the insensitive and shallow people Oro's written about in her blog entries. Fertility isn't the only thing that makes me a woman. And it is a part of all womanhood, so I can celebrate it gladly with my sisters who have had children just as I can support those who are wishing and hoping for them or suffering from infertility. I've always been drawn to the pomegranate - it's a beautiful symbol of fertility. So I'd recommend any of the pomegranate blends, particularly Queen of Clubs with those Earth Mother notes. Pomegranate is also present in Yerevan, Hanging Gardens, Persephone and La Bella Donna Del Miente... A little less conventional would be conceiving a baby because you are wearing the lovely pomegranate martini Swank (then again, martinis played a role for one friend of mine), Mi-Go Brain Canister or Freak Show! Would you want to tell that story at a child's wedding? "Here's the perfume I was wearing when you were conceived..."

(Very well done BTW Harlequin!) This may be the dumbest questions I have ever asked... I'm preparing to take the trout for them. On my bottles, the label was upside down from what Harley has posted above... having a rudimentary knowledge of anatomy, when I decanted my roll on, I peeled the label off one bottle and applied it the other way - i.e., like above, which looks "correct" to me. So, what do your Ace of Hearts bottles look like? Are the veins and arteries coming out of the top or the bottom? Am I missing some significant symbolism dealing with an upside down human heart?

I'm so thrilled with the Queen of Clubs. I thought that she sounded like one of the most beautiful and inspired LE blends offered yet - but I was frightened of the "earth" notes. I had no success with Zombi, Burial or their cousins, although I've envied the way others described those scents - on me, nothing pleasant at all. Finally, I have a blend that I love with that magical earthy, wet-dirt note. It amazes me the way that this note works to anchor the tart pomegranate, the sweet vanilla and currant and the soft florals. The resiny notes seem to weave the whole blend together for me. I am really looking forward to seeing how this one develops in the bottle over the next month or so, too. Although I won't hesitate to write a glowing review shortly after receiving a new scent, I will very rarely write a "didn't like it, off to the swap pile" review until I have owned something for at least a couple of months. Lots of my treasures have seemed harsh or incongruous when fresh from the lab, and it's almost a given that a gorgeous and complex blend like the Queen of Clubs is going to be even more gorgeous as the individual elements marry and mix in the bottle. Overall, this blend is a mind-blower and a wonderful gift from the Lab to the forum.

Of the three forum-only scents Beth gifted us with this spring, Ace of Hearts appealed to me the most, perhaps because I am a complete junkie for the florals... it's the rare BPAL floral blend that I truly dislike, or that goes completely wrong with my skin chemistry. And a gorgeous white floral is my end-all, be-all favorite. So, suffice it to say that I haven't fallen in love with anything this way since Snow White came my way last Christmas. Every floral essence that Beth has included must be the most beautiful variety possible - absolutely the most gorgeous freesia, orchid, gardenia, lotus and rose notes I have yet experienced. While I did fear that this blend could have an aquatic quality that might clash with me, I don't pick up any aquatic notes at all. Yet there is a feeling overall that these flowers are wet with dew, or picked damp after a light rain - perhaps the water-loving lotus or the rain orchid add this to the blend, or perhaps it's some other magic. The overall effect is an enchanting white floral - very bright and sweet upon application, and drying down without morphing much at all. I find that Ace of Hearts simply fades away slowly and sweetly over the course of four or five hours - a perfect excuse to carry my roller with me and slather a bit more of this uplifting and gorgeous scent whenever I like.

This is one of those scents, where you sniff your wrist over, and over, and over, and think, "How? How did Beth DO THIS?" It's a wee bit mind-blowing. Buttered popcorn, yes, but I can even smell the salt. And there's a hint, just a hint of sweetness there too. And now I'm really going nuts, because I didn't think I would possibly be interested in owning a bottle of this, and now I'm actually contemplating it. There's something very beguiling about Shill.